Friday, August 12, 2005

The postmodern romantic

Gregory Vincent St Thomasino's the postmodern romantic is a strange page. It is updated, or at least the post-date changes, but the page remains the same. Or at least seems to. Perhaps a word here or there. I keep intending to copy it, to refer to what was there at a particular time so I can see what, if anything, has changed at a later time.

Or perhaps we see it differently each time we visit. Our experiences may have been updated & so we come in with a different focus. That may be the reason behind it. Not what's within, but what's without.

The second paragraph there is a single line. "She was from Germany. She wanted to see where Lennon was killed." I do not know if I, if ever in New York, would want to see that, to stand outside the Dakota. But I now know that the Dakota was built in 1874 by the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, & was then so far out of town that it was given the ironic name The Dakota, even before that territory was separated into its two current divisions. I now know that the apartment where Lennon & Yoko Ono lived was previously owned by the late Robert Ryan, a brilliant actor, whose movies I had grown up watching, & who I always had liked.

That is information I have garnered since my previous reading of Gregory's line. It is something more that I bring to this latest reading. The line hasn’t changed, but I have, & so the reading is different.

What does not change is that the page is beautiful, & even if unchanged stands up easily to repeated readings. "That night, as she slept, I rewrote her poetry."

2 comments:

An interesting and poetic post, Mark. I also had the same problem and I finally asked Vincent Gregory St. Thomasino, to which he answered that he updates it once in a while _ fact that has never happened since I have known him.